Road Trip 2015 - Yellowstone's Hot Spots

A good part of Yellowstone National Park sits in the middle of a caldera, a basin formed by the collapse of a volcano, that is approximately 30 by 45 miles wide. It is suggested that the last explosion of the volcano was around 600,000 years ago which caused the central part of the volcano to collapse. While there is no lava flowing above ground, there is quite a thermal boiling pot below the surface of Yellowstone obviously heated by some hot molten substance even further down.

While New Zealand and Iceland are noted for their hot springs and geysers, Yellowstone claims to have more of them--10,000 thermal features of which over 300 are geysers. They are scattered all through the park but usually can be seen in groupings around areas where the hot water has found its way to the surface. The largest areas are the Norris Geyser Basin, the Mammoth Hot Springs and of course the Geyser Basin where Old Faithful can be found.

When we first met with a ranger to get an idea of how to get around the park and what to see, the ranger tapped Bob's finger and said, "This is not a thermometer. Do not test to see how hot the water is." And yet, every so often you would see someone do it. Some of the thermal features can actually get hotter than the boiling point.

Hot springs are the most common. They are pools of water that give off a lot of steam especially on those days that the temperature dropped. The hot water rises to the surface gets cooled a bit sinks, reheats and rises again.

Terraced Mammoth Hot Springs

Mudpots are places where the acidic content of the water breaks down the rock and soil forming mud and the water bubbles up through it. Unfortunately there had been so much rain and snow the day that we visited the mudpots area that they weren't burping as nicely as we saw in New Zealand.

Fumeroles or steam vents are the hottest features. They often sound like a tea kettle steaming only with out the whistle. They hiss and throw out a lot of steam.

Travertine Terraces are fascinating--especially the huge one at Mammoth Spring. The terraced deposits are from water rising through the limestone carrying large amounts of calcium carbonate. When it is deposited, it forms travertine, the chalky substance you see in the picture. It all looks like something a landscaper may have created for a focal point with a fountain in the yard of a mansion.

Geysers are hot springs with smaller escape hatches through which the hot water escapes. The heat builds up deep in the earth causing the water to boil but because of the weight of the water above the hot water, pressure builds. Eventually the bubbles in the hot water cause the water above it to push out of the opening in the earth causing an explosion of water as if someone had turned on a fireman's hose and aimed it into the air.

We waited until our third day in the park to go to Old Faithful. The first two days were cloudy and rainy and sometimes snowy. Old Faithful was one of the must-sees for me so I wanted a good day. Unfortunately it was clouded over every time we saw it go off. They estimate it will erupt every 60 to 90 minutes. Each time it does, the rangers calculate the next predicted time with a give or take of ten minutes. Old Faithful was within two minutes either side of the predicted time each time we watched it.

Each thermal feature has its own palette of colors that are amazing. There are actually microorganisms that survive quite nicely in the hot water and lend their colors to the water and the deposits and rocks around the features.

There are lots of warnings everywhere about staying on the boardwalks and not stepping onto the areas surrounding the features mainly because they could be very hot or fragile. In one area we found lots of people had lost some very nice hats in a few gusts of wind and had to leave them behind. It explained the ranger we saw though with a long pole that had a claw on the end of it.

Tip of the day: Hold on to your hat!

Road Trip 2015 - The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park has many facets. The wildlife, the hot springs, the geysers and the beautiful views. None were more beautiful than those we found in the area called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

The canyon varies from 800 to 1200 feet in depth and from 1500 to 4000 feet in width. Its length is about 24 miles. The hot spring activity changes the colors of the rock due to the differences in iron content.

On the eastern side of the loops where the upper meets lower is Canyon Village. There is a great Visitor Education Center there with a couple of videos to watch and several ranger programs. It's also the place we saw a bear spray rental. Apparently if you're into hiking the backwoods, you can rent a can of bear spray in case you have a bear encounter.

A south rim drive and a north rim drive give you several different views of the canyon and the upper and lower falls. The upper falls of the Yellowstone River is 109 feet high and the lower is 308 feet high. Both are impressive. The lower falls appears to have a green stripe in it but it is caused by a notch in the lip of the brink of the falls making the water deeper at that point and it doesn't mix with the air to cause the frothy look of a waterfall. Therefore it appears to be a deeper color and greenish.

We drove leisurely along both the north and south rims stopping in between to have lunch at the Canyon Lodge. There were times when the weather broke and the sun peeked out enough to enhance the colors. While it's not the size of the other Grand Canyon, it is certainly beautiful in its own right.

Wordless Wednesday

Road Trip 2015 - Yellowstone's Wildlife

There was lots of other wildlife in Yellowstone National Park but not always so obvious as elk and bison. Twice we pulled over when we saw some cars stopped along the road and discovered that folks were watching a bald eagle. Both sightings were in a bare tree. Made me wonder if the eagles preferred the bare branches to leafy greens.

In one day, we pulled over for four bear sightings. We had only seen two in Glacier but now we were adding up our sightings quickly. I wondered if the colder weather was bringing them out looking for as much food as they could scavenge before the winter set in. An amazing fact we learned from the ranger with the toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth was that bears don't always hibernate. The only time they go into hibernation is when their food source is gone. Then they hibernate to save their energy and their bodies feed off of the saved fat slower than if they were out running around.

Another bear fact learned was that they have teeth for pulling up vegetation and grinding it as well as canines for eating meat. Guess they try for a balanced diet?

And one more: The distinctive difference between a black bear and a grizzly is the hump on a grizzly's back. Either way, I'm not sticking around closely to decide.

On one particular wildlife stop we made, we noticed that people were a lot more excited than usual. When we got out and crossed the road to see what it was all about, we were pointed to something moving through the weeds on the other side of the river. We finally saw it! I snapped away as Bob inquired about it. Was it a wolf or a coyote?

Everyone's consensus was that it was a wolf. I took their word for it even though as Bob and I got back in the car we talked about wolves being more nocturnal. When I got home, I watched a video from the park about the difference between wolves and coyotes. When I make the picture larger, it looks like the animal has a pointier nose that would indicate it's a coyote. Plus wolves are said to be seen closer to dawn or dusk not in the middle of the morning.

There was also one other note in the information I gleaned from the NPS site. The coyotes are much less afraid of people, often look for a handout and will travel closer to the roads. So that's one more fact that leads me to believe it's a coyote. Hmmm. I've seen those in my backyard.

Road Trip 2015 - Yellowstone's Elk

The surest way to know that there was wildlife in the area was to look for a half dozen or more cars parked on the side of the road and people standing with cameras or binoculars all pointed in the same direction. On our way in and out of the park from West Yellowstone, we always found elk in a large field on the main entry road and tons of cars pulled into the pullout watching them with cameras set on tripods waiting for the best shot.

Some of our elk encounters though were a little closer than that. One such encounter was when we stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs. There was a hotel and dining hall there where we could get lunch. When we came out and began to drive away, I did a double take as we discovered three elk grazing on the grass in front of the park buildings in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of park visitors. The bull elk with a nice set of antlers eventually just sat down in the middle of the center green area and watched nonchalantly as cameras snapped and people moved around him--carefully.

Just as the warnings about bison were posted, so were warnings about the elk. In the introduction  to the park, we were reminded that this was rutting season. Later I would learn that the Mammoth Springs area was prime territory for the mating season or "rut." That meant that if the bull elk felt threatened--as in you were coming between him and his mate, you were in trouble whether you had antlers to buck his with or not.

One of the films we watched in a visitor center showed a bull elk tossing a woman a few feet into the air. I was determined to keep my distance. As a matter of fact, viewing them from the car sounded the best to me but eventually you are lured into getting out to get the better shot. Like when we found a bunch of people who had discovered a bull elk laying in the shade of some trees. I got just close enough to use my telescopic lens and get a good shot but others were inching closer and closer. Hadn't they seen the video, I wondered? I got my shot and trotted back to the car.

The elk and bison seemed to share the same fields for grazing. At least they didn't look like there was a territorial war going on. Maybe they just had a good healthy respect for each other. Maybe the bison who had just gotten through their rut wanted to watch the bull elks fight it out over the female elks. They did stay on the fringe of any elk herds.

Unlike the bison, we did not encounter elk on the road. Perhaps because the bull elks only get up to about 700 pounds as compared to the one ton bison they are more likely not to confront things the same or larger than them. All in all, there are about 10,000-20,000 elk in the park so like the bison, you are very likely to see them without much searching.

In the winter apparently, the elk wander outside the park where they are fair game for hunters when in season. Inside the park, they are food for bears, wolves, and mountain lions and scavengers like the bald eagle and coyote.

Toward the end of our visit we didn't even take pictures of the elk and bison. How many did I want to go through back home? Instead we just stopped and watched for a time--sometimes involuntarily when the animals were backing up traffic. Still, it was amazing.

Through My Lens - Yellowstone's Bison

Road Trip 2015 - Yellowstone National Park, The Bison

First of all, no matter how many times you sing "where the buffalo roam," it does not make it true. As we listened to a park ranger explain (all the while a toothpick perched in the corner of his mouth) there are no buffalo in the U.S. Nope. There are water buffalo and cape buffalo in other parts of the world but what is known as the American buffalo is really a bison. He seemed to know his stuff. I'll take his word for it.

Our first close encounter with wildlife was with the bison. We were driving along and I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye and yelled for Bob to stop. Good thing there was no one behind us! He backed up a bit and there, standing so still on the crest of a small hill that I thought maybe it was a statue, was a huge bison. He slowly looked us over and then went back to sleeping or daydreaming or whatever it was we'd distracted him from.

Now if nothing else had happened, I would have been content with that close encounter but later, it got up close and personal! We rounded a curve and had to slow suddenly because there were a few bison on the road. The more we inched forward the more bison seemed to appear until we were surrounded. I rolled the window down cautiously. I'd had a bison stick his head in the window at a drive-thru animal safari once and the slobber was atrocious. Of course then the bison knew there was food. These guys and gals just were lumbering on to find a grazing spot.

We were thrilled obviously and within the next couple of days would find ourselves up close and personal several other times. One morning we drove down a side road where there were several large herds of bison and took some great pictures there.

At the end of one day, as we were exiting one of the other areas of interest where we'd stopped, Bob had to stop the car because the bison were leading a string of cars down the street. He stopped and got out of the car to take a video. The bison were actually beginning to run. I happened to turn and look in the other direction when I realized that there was a group of bison running through the field and straight at our car. I yelled for Bob to get back in and just as he did, the bison seemed to put on the brakes, look startled that we were there and then the group split and went around us. My heart didn't stop but it sure did pound! It was repeatedly pointed out through rangers and signs that bison can run up to 30 mph.

We saw dry bison and wet bison. Big old bison and young calves trotting beside their moms. Bison standing. Bison walking. Bison running. Bison laying in the grazing areas. Bison crossing the road and meandering down the middle of it. If you go to Yellowstone and you don't see any bison you probably have your eyes closed. There are said to be about 5,000 in the park that roam freely and just in case you don't believe that they can be dangerous, the NPS has a video on their website to warn you.

The most dangerous thing we saw was a photographer who was so engrossed in taking pictures of a large elk that he didn't realize a bison was walking right down the path beside him. Thankfully he pulled his tripod up and backed away and let the one ton bison with the horns pass by.

Wordless Wednesday

Road Trip 2015 - Yellowstone

After a long, almost seven hour drive, we arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana. The town reminded me of a western mining town--of course it was modern day rendition of the old era. The Yellowstone Park Hotel would be our home base for the next four nights.

To try to save a little time, we scurried down to the information center for the park which was just about to close. As a matter of fact as we were waiting for the couple in front of us to finish, the lights went out.

The park ranger looked at us, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "How can I help you?" He gave us a quick run down of what to pay attention to in the park and where the best spots to observe wildlife were. We went off to find a cup of coffee and a place to sit and peruse the literature he put into our hands.

The next three days were amazing. The weather turned on us and offered a little rain but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm. There are basically two loops to the park, an upper and lower. We knew that the weather was iffy for the first two days and we wanted to see Old Faithful when it was predicted to be better weather on our third day. With that in mind we drove the upper loop all the way to Tower where we discovered that the lodge there where we thought we'd get lunch was closed. Undaunted, we doubled back and found something to eat at Mammoth where there was a hotel and dining area and some elk mingling with all the people.

The neat thing about our drive was that the rain either slowed or stopped almost every time we were ready to get out of the car. It did the same thing the next day only this time it was actually rain mixed with snow. We started off the morning with a light snow covering and news that the road between the Tower where we'd left off the day before and the Canyon where we were going to turn north and finish the upper loop was closed due to ice on the road. We decided to head south instead and explore the area between the Canyon and the Lake. That worked well with the weather really cooperating by the end of the day.

Our third day was not as sunny as we'd hoped but at least it wasn't raining or snowing as we watched Old Faithful and explored the other geothermal areas in the lower loop of the park. That day we spent almost as much time watching wildlife as we did the geysers.

So, how many pictures of bison and elk can one person take? Lots! And there was so much more. I decided that the next series of posts on Yellowstone will not be a blow by blow each day but rather divided up into categories of wildlife and natural wonders. Stay with me. The best is yet to come.

Through My Lens - Along The Way

Road Trip 2015 - Going To The Sun Road, GNP

Our last day in Glacier National Park was a planned drive from east to west on the Going To The Sun Road. The construction of the road that bisects the park began in 1921 and was completed in 1932. Several small tunnels were obviously a challenge back in the day. The name of the road derives from an old story from the Blackfeet of a deity named Sour Spirit who came down from the sun to teach the braves how to hunt. On his journey back to the sun, Sour Spirit had his image reproduced on the mountain now called Going To The Sun from which the road takes its name.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I had read reviews that said the road was treacherous with narrow spots and sharp curves. Probably as the seasons change it could get a bit dicey but the dry roads were just fine and while they weren't a four lane highway, there was plenty of room to maneuver even when faced with a large RV. Those who are squeamish though and travel west to east rather than the way we did might have a fright or two. It always seems like you are closer to the edge than you are.

There was some construction being done on parts of the road and that will continue as the need for repair on a 75 year old road arises so some parts of the road that usually allowed pulling off for points of view were closed. Other than that, we had an easy go.

The small park newspaper that is available as you enter the park had in the center section a map and numbered areas of interest along with the explanations for each. There is a shuttle that runs during the peak season and stops at several places along the way for you to get out and explore.

There were lots of good views of several of the glaciers the park is named for. Several options for boat rides on some of the lakes and rivers are available but many of those were closing for the season. A hike to a glacier was also not on our to do list so we just enjoyed the views from the road.

After stopping at Logan Pass, an elevation of 6,646 feet, where the road crosses the continental divide, we wound our way down to Lake MacDonald stopping for a few more good views and a waterfall or two, including one where the whole wall next to the road "weeps". At MacDonald Lodge, we enjoyed a nice lunch and then continued on to the west side of Glacier National Park and the end of the road--for the park.

The end of the road for us was a very nice B&B, Good Medicine, in Whitefish, Montana. Whitefish reminded us a lot of Redmond, WA, where our son and family used to live. The lake looked very similar as did the surrounding landscape. The town of Whitefish had a distinct western flavor but we ate at a restaurant that featured Cajun/southern cooking.

And of course, it was time to do some laundry before heading to Yellowstone.

Road Trip 2015 - Many Glacier, GNP

Our next foray into Glacier National Park took us up to the Many Glacier area. We saw a sign for the Apikuni Falls and stopped for a morning walk. The walk was more than we'd bargained for. No where on the sign marking the trail did it say what the climb was. Later, when we found some literature on hiking trails, we discovered that it was a 700 foot rise meaning that the end of the trail at the falls was 700 feet higher than the beginning. Add to that the fact that we were already at a higher altitude with the mountains, it was a real lung burner.

Halfway up the trail we stopped and reconsidered. Nope. We'd made it that far we were going to see it through. We let the youngsters and the hearty hikers pass us by and we took it slowly, stopping often to just look around and make noise--for the bears.

We were rewarded with a view of the falls near the end of the trail. You had to climb over some wet rocks to get to the base of the falls but we figured we'd gone far enough and had seen enough. The walk down was a breeze and took about a third of the time as the way up.

On the way to the Many Glacier Hotel where we planned to eat lunch we passed a slew of cars parked on the side of the road, people standing around them with cameras and binoculars poised. We pulled over as a park ranger signaled us to a free spot. Bob rolled down his window and asked what was up. The ranger pointed to the hillside and said there were several bears there. We should get out and take a look. We did and watched for a while as a black grizzly and a brown mama with two cubs foraged for snacks along the hillside. They were quite a ways up and I wished for a better long distance lens but blowing the picture up at least gives a good idea of what we saw.

After enjoying a delicious lunch at the hotel, we found the trail the ranger by the bears had told us about where we might see moose. We took a short hike, thankfully level, to a small shallow lake and sat with a dozen other people who were waiting to see if the moose would appear. Apparently the female had been along the opposite shore in the morning and the male usually made an afternoon appearance.

A couple of well placed roots provided a nice spot to sit and we waited. And we waited. And we waited. About forty-five minutes later we decided the moose was not going to show any time soon and a cup of coffee sounded really good. We got our coffee and drove off to visit the Saint Mary Visitor Center.

The Visitor Center was at the beginning of the Going To The Sun Road that we would travel the next day. It would save a little time if we went through the exhibits there then rather than wait for the morning.

Our drive back again took us through the rush hour cattle traffic and we slowed several times to make sure they didn't decide to cross in front of us.

Some of the glaciers.

In the little town of East Glacier, we had a wonderful dinner topped off by our first taste of huckleberry pie. It's sort of like blueberry but a little sweeter, I think. They make everything out of it--huckleberry vinaigrette, jam, taffy, etc. Wonder if they have to fend off the bears to get enough?